The European Commission has awarded Drexel a new associate partnership in a global consortium of universities offering graduate students a fully funded Master’s in Materials for Energy Storage and Conversion (MESC). Drexel is the only American university partnered with the prestigious MESC program and is funded at approximately $3.4M for implementation and scholarships.

Begun in 2005 and re-booted as MESC+ this summer, the program is conducted through eight research institutions in six countries, giving graduate students a multicultural experience at some of the world’s leading energy laboratories — with courses taught entirely in English.

These three companies have partnered with the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute through the Materials and Nanotechnology Consortium, a convenient avenue access to the wealth of knowledge, human resources and instruments available at Drexel with a much higher flexibility compared to standard grants and contracts. Membership in the Consortium is an excellent way to initiate a project with Drexel University or maintain a long-term relationship with a community of researchers at Drexel benefiting from all the assets of the university in the materials and nanotechnology areas. To learn more about the Materials and Nanotechnology Consortium, click here, or email Ms. Wendy Thurman at wmt29@drexel.edu.

Drexel Materials Professor Yury Gogotsi, PhD, whose research as founder and director of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute and member of the Department of Materials Science and Engineeringhas opened new possibilities for the application of nanomaterials, has received an h-index value of 100 from Google Scholar and other citation databases — the highest ever received by a professor within the College of Engineering.* The h-index classifies scholars according to the number of extant papers that have been cited by other scientists and publications. The Google Scholar distinction refers to Gogotsi’s papers published just since 2013.

The A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute has been busy nurturing the next generation of materials scientists and engineers. For six months, the group played host to three honors seniors from Council Rock High School North. The students worked with PhD mentors Kanit Hantanasirisakul and Kathleen Maleski on MXene research projects. They presented their final projects in a group meeting and at two regional science fairs.

In an exciting development for the field of aerospace engineering, the lightweight materials of airplanes and rockets might soon be getting stronger. A new method for making ceramic materials — which are used in propellers and heat shields — has enabled the introduction of chemical compounds to bolster their strength and could also imbue them with other useful properties. The discovery was recently reported by researchers at Drexel University and Penn State University.

During the MSE Commencement Dinner last week, DNI member were recognized on multiple awards. Tom Heng and Devon Spinelli were awarded with both the Senior Design Award and with the Undergraduate Innovation Award. Evan Quain tied with another senior for the Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award. Finally, Bryan Byles from Dr. Pomerantseva’s group won the Outstanding Graduate Student Award.

Our team of four undergraduate co-op students (Katya, Pavel, Jeremy and Riki) hit the ground running and research results are already coming at KAIST and KIST in South Korea. Our Korean partners are excited. Below are a few pictures of their time in Korea so far.

Congratulations to Ph.D. Candidate, Tyler Mathis, Dr. Babak Anasori and our former team member Dr. Mengqiang Zhao on publishing a nice paper in Nature. This work results from collaboration with Prof. Shu Yang’s group at UPenn.